


Glitch in the System: Crossroads

by SystemGlitch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 12:32:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13704534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SystemGlitch/pseuds/SystemGlitch
Summary: A three-part arc subtitled "Sombra and the Horrible, Terrible, No-Good Very Damp German Castle".Part 1: The Sound of Silence, by E.Part 2: Keep Your Enemies Closer, by E.Part 3: Sweet Nothing, by K.





	1. The Sound of Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By E.  
> Some hard truths happen.

“You’re sending me to go get paperwork?” **  
**

Sombra stood before Akande, face contorted in indignation. It had been almost a month since their failed infiltration, and she’d beenatoning ever since. She got it; she fucked up. Even she agreed that she fucked up. What else did she need to do to prove her penitence?

Akande sat at his desk, fingers steepled in a typical show of removed professionalism, regarding her distantly. “I am. Locate, acquire, and destroy. That’s your mission.”

She looked at him petulantly, reflexively unwilling to perform a task so glaringly below her abilities. “You want me to scan a repository of old files,” she repeated slowly back to him, “and then what - set it on fire? Tear them up piece by piece?”

“I am certain you’ll figure out a creative method for removing the evidence,” he replied evenly, unfazed by her annoyance. “Once you have acquired digital copies.”

“Then you need an omnic and a cleaning crew, Akande, not me.”

“I want  _you_  on this mission specifically, Sombra,” he insisted, not cracking in the slightest.

“I’m the world’s best hacker.”

“And the world’s  _worst_  teammate,” he replied without missing a beat. The tide of guilt she’d been slowly dealing with over the past few weeks, that she’d tried to ignore for the sake of the holidays, came flooding back from the cave she’d banished it to. It was, perhaps, the only thing strong enough to override her indignation at the task given her: collect  _literal paperwork_  from a thousand-year-old German castle Talon once employed as a base of operations in its post-Omnic Crisis infancy. It wasn’t even important paperwork - Akande just wanted someone to clean up an old mess, and was using it as a way for her to prove her loyalty. Truth was, as always, that she didn’t give two shits about Talon, but she did care about Widowmaker, and right now she couldn’t see much of a difference between the two.

She took a deep breath to steady her voice.

“Fine.”

* * *

The trip was easy, but long. So as to avoid any unwanted attention, Akande sent her on a train from Venice through the north of Italy, then Austria, before eventually landing in a small secluded village in the northwest of Germany. It was a 15 hour ride and she’d thought that, perhaps, it would have afforded her a nice break. It was almost like a vacation, and it may have even been enjoyable had she not been dining on a steady diet of frustration, boredom, and guilt. The country was vibrant and the weather ideal as she curled up in an isolated train car, and instead of the respite she’d hoped for, all she could think about was how badly she’d screwed the pooch.

She should have just taken a plane anyway and gotten it over with.

The castle was not difficult to get to, but it also wasn’t a particularly easy trip, either. It was not a tourist destination so much as a place that saw occasional foot traffic, and as a result had largely functioned as a historical site maintained by locals with some funding from the government for the past several decades. It had little to offer in the way of intel and even less to offer in the way of a challenge.

Sighing, Sombra hiked her bag up onto her shoulder and stepped inside the grounds.

If nothing else, the castle was a sight to behold: huge and strangely colorful with sharp angles both inside and out. There was none of the carnage here that had destroyed most of Germany; just typical entropy found in a building that had been standing for a very, very long time. Still, it was a picture of symmetry typical of Renaissance architecture, and something about the stark geometric framework appealed to the hacker’s logical mind. Were she not so deeply frustrated with having to be there in the first place, she may have been inclined to spend more time exploring its depths. As it was, however, she planned on getting in and out as quickly as she could.

“Hello?” she called out, expecting there to be a guard or two stationed at the front door. Akande had implied that she might face some minor resistance, but hand waved it away as “nothing you can’t handle.” Usually, that meant she had carte blanche permission to shut up any witnesses on a permanent basis, but after loudly making her presence known, there didn’t appear to be anyone in the building, so she continued on with only the smallest nod to caution.

The stonework stairs were crumbling - not dangerously, but unappealingly so. Sombra had never been a fan of ancient history. It was cold, dead, and the stories housed within the stone foundations were secrets she couldn’t hope to extract through manipulation or interfacing. The world around her was silent, and there was nothing Sombra hated more than information she couldn’t take for herself.

Looking at the map Gabriel had drawn -  _literally_  - on a piece of paper, she couldn’t help but think that this entire mission was just one giant, frustrating trick. Give the hacker a paper map and send her into a glorified library to bring back information that was so unimportant no one had bothered to transcribe it into digital form? She hadn’t thought Gabriel to be quite so petty, but they’d found their personalities intersected in stranger ways before.

Frowning and turning the paper around, she found her general location on the map and headed down the stairs.

The subterranean basement was dark, damp, and deeply uncomfortable. Sombra kept her hand on the wall to guide her until she hit a patch of slime that nearly made her retch; after that, she simply activated her screens and used the light coming off them to better illuminate her passage.

“Thank God,” she muttered as she cleared the last step and into a dimly lit corridor. Someone had strung up a basic network of electric lights. Waving her screens away, she squinted at the map again and continued on.

The archive was easy enough to find: it was the most modern-looking room, with a sign on the door reading “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.”

“That’s me,” she sighed, tentatively pushing it open with her palm, wary of reprising the previous slime situation. The door was dry, and she proceeded inside where she immediately noticed that there were boxes and loose papers lying around the room.

_Everywhere._

“Well, I’ve come this far,” she sighed. Pulling a chair over from the wall to sit at the desk, she got to work.

Trying to make the best of what was far from an ideal situation, she glanced over the paperwork before her. It was mostly blueprints and old personnel reports filled with names and places that were unimportant to her, but apparently important to Talon. There had to be something in there. Penitence aside, they wouldn’t send her out for  _nothing_. She scanned them dutifully, setting the data aside for the long trip home in which she’d have more than enough time to parse over any nuggets of interesting intel that might be located therein. For the time being, though, she was just a collection bot: flip, scan, store, destroy, repeat.

She worked for hours, diligently marking and shredding the documents she’d looked over while pointedly ignoring the sheer number she hadn’t gotten to yet. Sorting through the papers, she couldn’t keep her exasperated sighs to herself, even though there was no one around to appreciate them. The things she did for…

Well, she wasn’t entirely sure why she was doing this, but here she was regardless.

She was starting to get hungry and considered packing it in for the day and taking a trip to the village for dinner when she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps echoing down the barren hall.

“Finally,” she hissed under her breath, unholstering her weapon. “Thought the only casualty in this little adventure was going to be me.”

She stayed at the desk, unconcerned about the approaching footsteps. Flipping through the paperwork before her, she didn’t even bother looking up when the door opened; she just pointed her gun and yawned.

“I’ll be out of here in a moment,  _amigo_ ,” she said, scanning in one final paper. When she looked up, she expected to see a terrified guard.

Instead she found herself face to face with three Vishkar.

“Huh,” she said, dropping her weapon in the face of the vastly superior firepower now aimed at her. “Well, shit.”

* * *

They put her in the dungeon; in one of the cold, barred cells dotting the subterranean catacombs of the castle. It would have been hilarious had it been anyone else, in any other situation, and with any other niche. Instead, it was perfect, if only in its efficacy in keeping the hacker locked up with no real manner of escaping.

Turns out technology didn’t exist 1000 years ago. Who’d have thought?

Despite this knowledge, Sombra ran her hands along the walls, searching for any frequency at all, any remodeled tech to latch into and exploit, but what she found was pitiful at best. The thick walls of the castle and the remoteness of their location were really cramping her style. She was certain there must have been tech there at some point, but the castle had been unused for so long that it looked as though someone had forgotten to pay the wifi bill. Despite her best efforts, she found nothing save for some tendrils of a connection coming from the village and her own ineffective hot spot hitting dead air.

Still, it was something, and Sombra prided herself in making even the worst situation work in her favor. Using every ounce of finesse she had, she managed, for a brief moment, to hitch onto some connection and make the link to Talon.

“Hey, guys?” she said into her ear piece, reminding herself to be succinct in case the tenuous line she’d leeched onto dropped. “I’m kind of in the shit.”

“Sombra?” came the raspy voice, made harsher by the terrible connection. “What’s wrong?”

Sombra held back a shout of joy. “Gabe? Thank God, there’s practically no connection here. I’m going to need an extraction.”

There was a pause Sombra wasn’t sure to attribute to the poor connection or the palpable incredulity emanating through the call. “You need an extraction,” Gabriel said, voice dry, “from an 11th century medieval castle?”

“They put me in the dungeon. It’s embarrassing.”

She could hear him pinching the bridge of his nose. “You need an extraction from the  _dungeon_  of an 11th century medieval castle?”

“I mean I’m not exactly  _happy_  about it, but -”  
  
“What did you do?”

Sombra frowned, still on her tiptoes and struggling against a growing cramp in her foot. “What do you mean? I did as you asked, Gabe - I went into the woodland of Germany to dig through old papers.”

“I mean what  _else_  did you do?” he asked, the unspoken  _again_ ringing in her ears.

“What else?” she said, her elation at having reached her team shifting abruptly into anger. “Nothing. I followed the plan, Gabe. Your plan, if I remember correctly. To the T, in fact. No variations on a theme, no heroics, no deceit - I did everything I was told and you sent me into a sleeping den of Vishkar.”

“Vishkar?” he asked, and she could hear him beginning another sentence when their connection was abruptly cut off.

“ _Ya valió madres_ ,” she hissed, wishing she had something to slam down in anger. She settled for a petulant kick at the dungeon wall, immediately loosing a cascade of dirt and stones. For a moment she wondered if she could somehow dig herself to freedom, but the thought passed as quickly as it had arisen when she realized she was a hacker with no tools and not an excavator.

Finally giving up, she groaned loudly and flopped to the floor, doing what she could to ignore the cold, filthy ground and the chill in the castle air. One of the Vishkar had set up a teleporter, and the glowing portal lay just beyond her reach, the closeness of the lifesaving tech frustrating her all the more. She didn’t know her captors well enough to know whether this had been performed as an act of pettiness or not, but the result was the same regardless. Sombra was, without question, deeply annoyed.

Even worse: she was  _bored_.

With little else to choose from, she began sifting through the files she’d scanned in from the store room, idly flipping through them one after the other, not paying much attention to them as they passed until one in particular caught her eye. She paused after flipping past it, scanning backwards to reexamine it. It was a photograph from the early years of Talon’s infrastructure, showing all the formative members around a table.

And there, at the center, next to Moira O’Deorain and Maximilian, was Sanjay.

“ _No mames_ ,” she exclaimed under her breath, fingers flying as she cross-referenced the old photo with the rest of her database. Of course she’d suspected it - she’d been through Talon’s database ten times by that point - but she’d never seen actual, undeniable  _proof_.

It was almost enough to distract her from the rumbling her her stomach. Cackling to herself, she perused the rest of the files, bookmarking things to come back to and backing everything up when she was done. Maybe this little trip had borne fruit after all. All she needed now was to get out and savor it.

It seemed like forever before she finally heard the soft whoosh of the teleporter being activated. A woman stepped through: tall, elegant, head held high as the man who came after her spoke in low tones, all the while casting Sombra several not so subtle looks.

“ _Thik hai_ ,” the man said, sighing loudly enough that Sombra could hear him, “ _lekin jaldi karo_.”

“ _Zarur,_ ” she replied. The man looked over at her once more before stepping back into the teleporter, the ethereal blue mist within grasping his body and pulling him out of sight in the space of a second.

The woman approached her cell with little concern, knowing full well Sombra was harmless in her current state. Her gun, of course, had been taken, and there was little she could do about her situation. Her translocators were too big to fit through the bars and she certainly wasn’t squeezing out herself. No, she was right and truly stuck, and it was obvious to an embarrassing degree.

“Sombra,” she said, hands clasped behind her back. “It appears as though you are somewhat - how should I say?” She paused, tapping her chin. “Ah, yes. Impotent, in your current situation.”

“You don’t have to be crass about it.”

Satya smiled; her mouth set in a thin, pert line that was equal parts prim and pretentious. “I would have figured the world’s greatest hacker might be a bit more difficult to capture.”

“Yeah, well, I would have figured the world’s greatest hacker wouldn’t be digging through dead trees for data no one actually gives a shit about, and yet here we are,” she said, standing and walking slowly toward the cage, emphasizing each step. “Face. To. Face.”

Curling her hands around the bars, she brought her face as close as she could get to the gap between them, smiling mischievously. “You know we can talk a lot more easily without these bars in the way,” she said, tapping her nails against them as she spoke. “Woman to woman. Let me look at that fancy teleporter over there.” She nodded her head at the glowing portal and winked. “ _Oye_ , I could make it  _sing_  for you, Satya.”

The woman flinched at her name, looking at her with such a deep distaste that Sombra couldn’t help but laugh. “What did I ever do to you?” the hacker asked, half facetiously. She knew what she’d done and she knew why the Architech wanted to speak with her.

“You stole my technology.”

At least they were on the same page.

“Stole is such a harsh word. You clearly still  _have_  it,” she said, pointing through the bars at the teleporter. “So what’s the big deal?”

Satya was trying her best to remain impassive, but the physical effort it was taking to maintain her composure ruined any chance of her appearing nonplussed. She took a step closer, hands still held stoically behind her back, approaching just within Sombra’s reach. Sombra had no intention of harming her, but Satya didn’t know that. It was a power move.

“You took my creation,” she said, hitting each dental with the harsh plosive nature of her native tongue. “You took it and you  _changed_ it.”

Sombra narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at the Architech, assessing the creases in her brow and the slow dawning anger in her face for the truth behind her words. It was there, dancing in the cracks of her expression - she just needed to catch it.

“ _Sí, verdad_  - a few tweaks here, some alterations to the base code and hard light structure. I just fixed a couple errors was all,” she said, shrugging casually while keeping her eyes fixed to the woman’s face. “Nothing’s perfect.”

It was the final jab, she figured, that got far enough under Satya’s skin that her true feelings showed. Her expression flickered the slightest bit, her eyes shifting for just long enough for the hacker to realize what was actually bothering her.

It was not that Sombra had  _stolen_  her tech; it was that she had deigned to  _improve_  upon it.

“I mastered the art of manipulating hard light,” Satya said, voice low and steady, but with a nearly-imperceptible quaver to it that Sombra picked out like the melody of a complicated orchestral piece. “There were no ‘errors.’”

Sombra laughed, stepping back from the bars to place her hands on her hips and regard the woman with no small amount of incredulity. “And people say I’m conceited.” She smirked, leaning against the wall to continue picking the Architech’s brain. “Tech is only as good as the user; I just needed it to work harder for me is all. Don’t get bent out of shape about it.”

“Its purpose is to help those who cannot help themselves,” Satya maintained, her course set. “To further the Vishkar goal of creating a better world.”

“A better world, huh? Like the favela you leveled in Brazil?” she laughed, and this time Satya didn’t even try to hide her surprise. “Good job there, by the way. Talon _loved_  that. Really sowed some discontent among the masses. Something to pick at down the line.” Looking down at her nails, she shrugged as she casually dropped her bomb. “Helps having friends among the Vishkar, I suppose.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, her arms crossed now. Sombra watched the movement of the jewelry dangling around her wrist, a subtle fashionable departure from the austere nature of the Vishkar uniform.

The hacker regarded her for a long moment, trying to figure out how best to leverage what she was about to say next. “You really don’t know, do you?” she said at last, testing the woman’s investment in their little chat, and seeing just how easily she was baited by the promise of a good secret.

Satya, she could tell, did not want to bite. She remained silent, regarding Sombra coldly for a long time. It was only the two of them there, though, and she really had little choice in the matter unless she wanted to engage in a standoff she couldn’t hope to win.

“What?”

Sombra grinned, pushing off the wall again to get closer to the other woman. She tossed her hair and crossed her arms to mirror her. “Sanjay,” she said, raising one notched eyebrow to enunciate her words, “sits on the board of Talon.”

“ _Chup raho._ ”

Sombra shrugged, inferring the meaning of her words by the sharpness of her tone and the blaze of anger in her eyes. “No one ever appreciates when I tell them the truth.”

Satya shook her head and looked away, but before she did, Sombra could see a glimmer of doubt in her expression. There was something keeping her from completely disregarding the hacker’s words; something she remembered that made her think, perhaps, there was a grain of truth to what she was saying. It reminded her of the time she played Zaryanova like a pawn, watching the light of reluctant realization dawn in her eyes as she tore down her idol in one quick truth. It just never, ever got old.

Yet again, the seed of doubt had been planted, and Sombra was going to have one hell of a time watching it sprout from afar.

If she ever got out of there, of course.

“You are lying.”  
“Usually, yeah, but not this time.” Sombra shook her head. “That was a  _really_  good one, too, and you got it for free. Can a girl get some dinner in exchange for international secrets, maybe?”

“No.”

“Cruel,” Sombra sighed. “Anyway, if you need some proof, I can give it to you. Just say the word.”

“I do not need your ‘proof,’” Satya said after a long pause, not looking at Sombra as she spoke, and not waiting for her to respond. She turned abruptly and stepped through the portal, leaving Sombra alone with her thoughts and nursing a particularly vehement curiosity.

“See you soon,” she chuckled. Smiling to herself, she sat down on the ground and waited.


	2. Keep Your Enemies Closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By E.  
> A tenuous arrangement happens.

It didn’t take Satya long to return, although Sombra would have sworn it was an eternity. When the Architech approached the bars of the cell, she was holding a bag.

“Here,” she said, shoving it through the bars and dropping it to the ground. Sombra walked up cautiously, picking it up and looking inside.

“What’s this?” she asked, extracting an unfamiliar, thin bread. It was mottled brown and she found it very suspicious.

“Chapati,” Satya replied, offering little more by way of explanation. “You implied you were hungry.”

“Not wrong,” Sombra shrugged, throwing caution to the wind and placing the bread between her teeth. Poisoning her would be stupid if they wanted anything at all from her. Besides - all signs indicated that the Architech was as ridiculously humanitarian as she professed herself to be, and Sombra didn’t think that murdering a prisoner was in her M.O.

Satya watched her eat, avoiding eye contact, but decidedly observing. It almost looked as though she were waiting on a verdict regarding the food.

“Not awful,” Sombra said, thinking that the bland bread could have used a little spice. Who just ate tortillas, anyway? “You make it yourself?”

“No,” Satya said, looking offended at the suggestion. Sombra wondered if she’d worn the same expression when Akande had informed her she’d be coming here in the first place. Cooking and paperwork, both beneath their stations.

Maybe they could be friends, after all.

Shoving the final bit of chapati into her mouth, she chewed it slowly, watching the Architech and wondering what she was thinking. There were so many questions, and Sombra was of the distinct opinion that she would be wise to choose which ones she asked carefully.

“So,” she said, wiping her hands off on her leggings. “What brought you back? The age old killer of cats?”

“We have work to do here,” she replied, stoic and focused. The yes to Sombra’s second question was unspoken, but easily apparent in her expression.

“Why are you here, anyway?” Sombra followed up, letting Satya extrapolate regarding her curiosity on her own. “This is a Talon base.”

“It is a Vishkar stronghold,” Satya corrected her, “containing important  _Vishkar_ documents.”

Sombra frowned, considering Satya’s words. The castle, by all appearances, had been abandoned long ago. Sombra wasn’t under the impression, based on her cursory perusal of the place that any newcomers had arrived for anything other than tours or upkeep. Which meant that, if the Vishkar were here for documents, then it was the same documents Sombra had been sent to locate and destroy.

“Yeah?” she asked, tilting her head curiously. “Just found out about its existence, did you?”

“…yes.”

“Strangely dire timeline for something that’s been languishing for years, don’t you think?” she added, wheels turning so fast that she nearly forgot about her predicament.

Satya’s look was all the answer she needed. “What are you implying?”

“ _Hijo de la chingada genio_ , Akande,” she cursed to herself, half laughing as the pieces of the puzzle she’d been locked up for came tumbling together. “You  _planned_  this meet.”

“What are you talking about?” Satya asked, looking decidedly less confident than she had a moment before.

“Nothing,  _amiga_ , just working out some details in the old brainpan.” Of course: this wasn’t a  _penance_  mission - Akande knew Sanjay and Satya would be there for the same reason she was. He knew they’d cross paths. Furthermore, he knew that Sombra would have found the very information Sanjay was there to destroy. The only real questions that remained were whether Akande had intended that the information be kept  _from_ the Vishkar or dispersed  _to_  them.

Doomfist knew how Sombra worked. He knew what she’d find, he knew she’d be placed in a position of bargaining, and he knew - he  _had_  to have known, or at least bet on - her using what she’d found as a bartering chip. It would absolve him of responsibility in the matter while still sowing a little seed of nuance into the garden if chaos he was carefully cultivating. The only thing she couldn’t be sure of was whether Akande had intended that Sombra’s dispersal of this information to one of the Vishkar’s top agents was intended to sow doubt within their ranks, or depose Sanjay. That motive remained a mystery, but Sombra’d be damned if she wasn’t impressed by the rest of it.

“Just give me your hand. I’ll transfer the data you want. It’s not like I can hack you into opening the door for me.” She laughed, sticking one hand daintily through the bars. “Although that might be an upgrade to consider.”

Satya stood there, staring at her outstretched hand. Sombra sighed, wiggling her fingers to beckon for her. “I’d say I don’t have all day but I guess that’s up to you, yeah?”

Pursing her lips into a frustrated line, she reached out and touched her fingers to Sombra’s. Smiling widely, Sombra dropped her firewall and let the files fly.

Unlike her, Satya had to pull up her own external screen to view the data she had sent her. It hadn’t been much - some tidbits of info that didn’t contain important Talon secrets alongside that single, damning photograph.

It didn’t take her long to review. A single click, a few swipes, and she had all the information she needed to send her world crashing down about her ears. Sombra watched her closely, and to her credit, Satya kept her expression mostly neutral.

Mostly.

“Sanjay will want to speak with you,” she said, her screen shrinking away as she returned the small, portable hard light generator to a clip on her belt.

“You know where to find me,” Sombra shrugged. “Hey,” she said as Satya turned to leave. The Architech paused, not turning around, but inclining her head to the side to hear what the hacker had to say.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry they’re fucking with you.” Sombra wasn’t sure where that pang of empathy came from. If she had to guess, it was born of respect: even in her hubris, she had to admit that Satya Vaswani was a genius. An idealistic chump, sure, but a really smart one.

Satya grunted a soft acknowledgement of Sombra’s words and stepped into the teleporter. Sombra breathed a sigh of relief, ready for some alone time with her data until the next plot twist hit her.

Ten minutes later, two armed guards stepped out in the Architech’s place.

“Oh come on,” Sombra growled, watching the novice guards lean against the wall. “I can’t  _do_  anything. Why do I need babysitters?”

One guard, idly eating jerky, looked at the other. “She’s got a point,” he said, and for a moment Sombra thought they might actually leave her in peace. Then his face broke into a patronizing grin. “What’s she gonna do - hack the metal bars?” The guards had a good chuckle at Sombra’s expense, and she crossed her arms to turn away from them, booting up her screen. At least she still had  _her_ tech, even if there was no way to really make it work for her.

She fell asleep to the sound of rats gnawing at the walls of the cell beside her and the sound of her own stomach, only temporarily appeased by the bread. A glimmer of fear accompanied her as she drifted off, and she wondered if she might not be in more trouble than she had originally thought.

The same guards that had been there when she’d fallen asleep were there in the morning, arguing among themselves over some dice game they were playing in the dirt a few feet from her cell. Sighing, and in lieu of a proper breakfast, she casually tapped into the frequency of the larger guard’s communication device, throwing interference at it until it erupted in a pitch so high she could hear it across the hall. The guard shouted, grabbing his ear piece and tossing it to the ground.

“What happened?” his companion asked, watching his tantrum with confusion.

“Static. Shit,” he replied, and Sombra chuckled audibly from her cell.

“You -” he said, and he made it two steps toward her cell when the crack of a shot rang out. Sombra saw his shocked expression before he fell to the ground before her. A moment later his companion followed suit, their deaths in such quick succession that neither had had the chance to vocalize an alarm.

And out of the darkness behind them stepped Widowmaker.

“Holy  _shit_ ,” Sombra said, her voice halfway between a sob and a laugh. “How did you find me?”

Widowmaker stepped over the slain men and up to the bars, glancing down the hallways to make certain they were alone. “I got your message,” she said, securing the gun along her back. She moved slowly, like liquid, and Sombra could tell that it was in part because she was still recovering. A fresh wave of guilt flooded through her, effectively nullifying the adrenaline of witnessing the sniper’s masterful entrance.

“I wasn’t sure Gabriel would send anyone. I…wasn’t sure…” she shook her head. “You came for me?” she asked, shocked, fingers curled tightly around the bars of her cell.

Widowmaker didn’t speak for a long time, looking away. Her golden eyes stared at nothing, but Sombra noticed the slow creep of a smile tugging at her lips.

“You said you would not lie to me again,” she said, shrugging. “I saw no reason not to believe you.”

Sombra pressed her face against the bars of her cell, relieved on a myriad of levels. “Please get me out of here so I can kiss you.”

Widowmaker chuckled, leaning over to pat down one of the slain guards until she found the ancient, heavy key ring with a variety of thick iron keys hanging from it.

“Well,” she said, resigned to trial and error. Stepping up to the cell, she tried one after the other until finally, with the sweet clank of rusted metal grating against the lock, the door swung open.

Sombra shot out with an alacrity of someone escaping a burning building, stepping immediately into the spider’s arms. Grabbing a fistful of her suit, she stood on her toes and pressed her head against Widow’s forehead, self-consciousness and guilt holding her back like a lead weight.

Widowmaker had no such compunctions, however, placing her hand against the line of Sombra’s jaw and pressing her lips against the softness of her own.

“I am glad to see you,” Widow said, smiling against the hacker’s cheek.

“Not as glad as I am to see you,” Sombra replied, laughing. “Let’s get out of here.”

The teleporter glowed in the darkness beside them, an ominous blue portal to somewhere else threatening to release a slew of combatants at any moment.

“What about this?” Widow asked, the length of her body still pressed against Sombra’s. At that point, Sombra was almost ready to throw caution entirely to the wind and suggest an intimate encounter with the office desk in the next room, but for once in her life chose caution over thrill.

“I’ll handle it.” Extracting herself from Widow’s grip, she frowned at the teleporter. “Give me one second,” Sombra said, walking over to it.

“Sombra -” Widowmaker cautioned, but the hacker didn’t try to step into it, kneeling before the glowing base and placing a hand against it. The portal shimmered a light purple, flickering for just a moment before the swirling colors leading to an unknown location changed direction. Overlaying the swirling light, Sombra’s skull blinked mockingly.

“What did you do?” Widow asked, tilting her head in her usual expression of curious suspicion.

“I changed the destination,” Sombra answered, shrugging, and unable to keep the mischief from her voice.

“To where?”  
Sombra smiled impishly, offering a helpless shrug

“ _Sombra._ ”

“The banks of the Thames.”

Widowmaker gave her a look.

“What?” Sombra laughed, stepping away from the portal now that her work had been done. “It was either that or the Cliffs of Moher, but somehow soggy Vishkar covered in dead fish and pollution were funnier to me than dead ones.” She slipped her hand into Widow’s, twining her fingers between the sniper’s.

“You would not be you without the pettiness,” Widowmaker mused, but there was no malice to her tone. In fact, it almost sounded warm. “Is this yours?” she added, holding out Sombra’s gun, wry smile on her face.

“My baby,” the hacker nearly sobbed, clutching it to her chest. “All I need is Oso and my family is complete.” She paused. “And something to eat. I am  _starving_.”

“I secured a room at a boarding house in the village,” Widowmaker said. “They will have food, certainly. Our plane will be here to pick us up in the morning.”

“By ‘secured us a room’ you mean…” Sombra asked, raising an eyebrow.

Widowmaker offered her a poignant stare.

“Okay, fine,” Sombra gave in, putting up her hands. “I won’t ask.” She paused. “You took a plane?” she asked, staring at her incredulously.

“Of course I did,” she said, frowning in confusion. “How else would I get here?”

“You know what?” Sombra said, shaking her head. “Nevermind. Let’s go.” Reaching for the spider’s hand, they left the castle together.


	3. Sweet Nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By K.  
> A shower happens.

They drove in silence, Widowmaker cutting tight corners through the streets of old Germany with ruthless abandon. Beside her, Sombra settled a hand over her own on the gear shift, a gesture of wordless gratitude and residual terror at the sniper’s recklessness. A mix of crumbling buildings and scattered lodging flew past, a collage of restored homes, ancient towers in various states of entropy, and traditional brauhauses whose facades suggested a desperate adherence to an identity fractured by the Omnic Crisis. **  
**

“You think they’re ever going to get this place back to normal?” Sombra asked idly, violet eyes scanning the city with precision more commonly reserved for rapid aggregations of data.

“No,” the other woman replied, downshifting as they rolled toward an intersection. For the first time in their short commute, Widowmaker considered the city around them. The contrasting decay and renewal spoke to that hope on its surface, but its citizens, despite their resilience, wore familiar expressions, hollow and haunted. Theirs were the visages of people aware that “normalcy”, were they able to attain it, would never look as it did before the war. She recognized that doleful vacuity in them as she did in Gabriel staring stoically out the window of so many post-mission transports, his face filled with shadow and loss; she saw it in Moira, even, in the faraway and sorrowful glances that on rare occasions shattered pointed determination as quickly as it knit itself back together.

She saw it in herself, in the reflection of a face she recognized in form alone, its predatory sharpness and unnatural hue at painful odds with the images clipped to the pages of a stolen dossier hidden beneath the lining of her rifle’s carrying case. She saw it in herself, in the rare moments where the fateful concurrence of memory, happenstance, and physiological impetus almost resembled feeling.

“No?” Sombra repeated, diverting her attention from the window to the woman in the driver’s seat. Detecting the motion from the corner of her eye, Widowmaker met her questioning glance briefly, refocusing on the road ahead as the light changed and she peeled away from the intersection.

“They may find something like it, perhaps,” Widowmaker said, words punctuated by the necessary shifting of gears. “But it will not be the normal they knew. When you experience what these people have - what we have and do - ‘normal’ takes a different shape, I think. It is not bad, but it is not the same.”

Sombra offered no reply but her lingering gaze, weighted with consideration as she mulled over the sniper’s explanation. That her reply was not immediate and in agreement - as Gabriel’s or even Akande’s would be were either of them her passenger - underscored a nagging thought the sniper contended with in brief skirmishes, shoving it aside when it became too uncomfortable: though her life to this point was by no means easier, Sombra didn’t wear the evidence of her crossings with trauma the way the rest of Talon’s elite agents or inner council did. The contrast was marked: the hacker approached life and all its twists with an eagerness the assassin expected more of their idealistic adversaries in Overwatch than a world-renowned hacker and murderer. Both her attitude and approach were starkly out of place compared to, say, the mask of nigh-suicidal nihilism Gabriel maintained to conceal his own, tremendous hurt. It was certainly a stark contrast to Widowmaker’s own capacity - natural or engineered - for harsh practicality which, removed from the field, only served to keep others at a distance.

Sombra’s normal was so radically different from her own, and she had adapted to it with grace, if not ease. Few, if any, of their shared colleagues could say the same. Yet, as they passed the city limits and flew headlong toward the scattered neighborhoods beyond, Widowmaker considered that the subjectivity of normal offered expansive room not only for reactive change, but proactive adjustment.

* * *

She opted for a lodge on the outskirts of town a few miles removed from the city proper. Unremarkable in every way, the sniper selected it less for its amenities - which, while adorably rustic were spartan at best - and more for its removal from the prying eyes of the public. While aircraft were common, unmarked transport still drew suspicion even in the most dishonest of environs. Though far from luxurious, it still screamed “comfortable”:  a throwback to the post-and-beam timber framed houses seen in countless photos of the region from before the Omnic Crisis, its interior alight with the orange glow of a pre-lit fire courtesy the appropriately scarce staff, and plush furniture better suited to the countryside of France than the barely extant ruins of Germany.

Against her better judgement, she rejected Akande’s recommended flophouses which, while tactically appropriate in their removal from the city, offered less in terms of the easy comfort she assumed Sombra would want upon her liberation. Now, pausing in the doorway, the sniper felt her judgement reaffirmed as Sombra, fingers interlaced with her own, dragged her further into the rented room before them. It wasn’t big - she’d seen larger studio apartments - and there was nothing to it beyond the bed, coffeetable, kitchenette, fireplace, and the small attached bathroom, but their needs for the evening hardly exceeded what those features could provide.

“This is nice,” Sombra said, shrugging off her coat and tossing it over the narrow kitchenette counter. She offered her approval with a tired smile, indicating clearly to the woman beside her not only her gratitude, but recognition of the tacit understanding that informed the sniper’s choice of accommodations. For all her improvement in communicating, well, anything, Widowmaker was endlessly grateful for Sombra’s ability to decode her quieter displays of affection. Where words so often failed her, actions proved continuously their use as an auxiliary means of communication.

“I am glad you like,” she replied, setting aside the composite rifle case in her opposite hand. “It is quaint, I know, but It will suffice.”

“Really slumming it, huh?” Sombra asked, half-jabbing, half-joking.

Inclining her chin a fraction of an inch, Widowmaker offered her all the artificial inconvenience she could muster. “We must all make sacrifices,” she replied airily.

“I’ll find  _some_  way to make it up to you,” the hacker said, her smile broadening with the suggestion.

“Will you, now?” the sniper asked, arching an amused eyebrow as Sombra closed the few feet between them and rolled onto her toes, hesitating just a second before pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

“I have some… ideas. If you want,” she said, that same uncertainty preceding the suggestion as she set her hands gently at the sniper’s waist. Widowmaker noted that reticence, the unfamiliar restraint behind that touch and the suggestion of sex before it. Despite the well-intentioned mindfulness with which they rebuilt their relationship in the wake of Sombra’s botched revenge, the constancy of their intimacy still suffered - not for a lack of desire, but for a tangible, unspoken concern that either should press too hard or too soon. That fear became a barrier, built by both sets of hands while neither of them were looking and not acknowledged by either.

In that second of consideration, she felt the hacker’s resolve flutter - felt the warmth of her palms dissipating with the release of that touch. Covering Sombra’s hands with her own, Widowmaker denied that retreat, pressing them back against the weave of her suit as she leaned forward to return the other woman’s kiss.

“Of course. Shower first?” she asked.

Sombra blinked, nonplussed and surprised, but with evident relief. “Y-yeah. Sure. Be nice to wash the ‘castle dungeon’ off.”

* * *

“Jesus, spider,” Sombra yelped, recoiling from the spray of water that greeted her upon hopping in the shower. “You trying to freeze me to death?”

“What?” Widowmaker asked, perplexed.

“It’s a fucking refrigerator in here. You mind?”

Realization dawned on the sniper with all the rapidity of a slow-moving railcar, its agonizingly slow approach underscored by the narrow-eyed glare Sombra maintained in anticipation that her request be acknowledged. “Oh! Sorry,” she apologized, leaning back to turn the knob emblazoned with a lone, red H. “Better?” she asked after a moment, wrinkling her nose at the shift in temperature. What was warm to her was nearly always the opposite for others; this was evident in not only her wardrobe, but the parameters by which she defined comfort in general.  Though aware of this divergence, there were still isolated instances where her unique physiognomy was made more readily apparent than others. Unfortunately, they almost exclusively occurred at Sombra’s expense.

Frowning, the shorter woman inched away from the wall, her movements small and weighted with exaggerated trepidation. “Getting there,” she said as she pushed herself flush against the sniper.

“What was it you said?” Widowmaker asked. “‘I can make it up to you’?”

Sombra snorted, pressing her face beneath the sniper’s collarbone to shield against the water. “’S my line,” she muttered, lips gliding across her skin.

“Mine now,” Widowmaker said matter-of-factly, setting her hands on the other woman’s shoulders to turn her about. After a minute’s fruitless resistance, Sombra complied, facing the wall against which she’d previously attempted to protect herself. Widowmaker reached past her, plucking one of the tiny bottles of shampoo from the edge of the tub. Twisting off the cap, she poured a fraction of its contents into one hand, setting the container aside before rubbing her palms together.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Sombra asked, glancing over her shoulder. Widowmaker met her gaze evenly.

“Yes. No. Shut up.”

“How  _cute_.”

Rolling her eyes, Widowmaker ran her hands through the other woman’s hair, working up a lather before setting her fingertips to the curve of her skull. Despite her initial incredulity, Sombra relaxed beneath her hands, leaning against the assassin as she washed her hair. It was a softer gesture than either was accustomed to - both for Widowmaker offering it and Sombra accepting it. Sex and passing affections were different, as were the basic considerations borne of communal living such as cooking or cleaning; they were  _kind_ , and they were certainly comfortable, but this sort of intimacy seemed inherently different. Widowmaker contemplated it idly as she continued, equal parts massage and act of service, searching for the source of that marked differentiation.

It was physical, but it wasn’t sexual. Though they’d taken care of each other in various contexts, this was unique, both wholly unbidden and entirely unrelated to any other arrangements they had by virtue of their professions or circumstances. It was a familiarity that was wholly unfamiliar, borne from a habit of closeness but unlike its other manifestations.

She didn’t hate it, this peculiar softness. In a way, it felt similar in nature to her interest in the chateau before. It wasn’t necessary - Sombra could wash her own hair - and it certainly was of no benefit to  _her_. But, as she felt the tension leaving the hacker’s neck and shoulders - both beneath her fingers and in the subtle shift of muscle beneath skin pressed against her own - she recognized there  _was_  reward to it: Sombra enjoyed it. That was enough. Simply being  _close_  was enough. Normal, even.

“Huh.”

“ _Qué_?” Sombra asked drowsily.

“I just,” Widowmaker began, pursing her lips as she attempted to translate her thoughts from quiet observation to speech. As she pondered, the hacker wriggled her shoulders in a wordless request she continue - which she did. “I do not know how to express it,” she admitted. “Is this all right?”

Sombra tilted her head. “Of course it is. What do you mean?”

Shifting just out of the shower’s trajectory to better rinse Sombra’s hair, Widowmaker resumed running her hands through it to ensure her own thoroughness. “It has been a very long time since I have wanted to simply be close to someone,” she said thoughtfully. “It is strange that I should be able to want it at all.”

“It’s weird for me, too,  _araña_ ,” Sombra replied, turning to face her.  Though she didn’t offer the sniper eye contact, the softness of her words and the slowness with which she spoke them belied her sincerity. There was a sadness in her tone Widowmaker had only heard once before, and as Sombra set a hand against her stomach, fingertips grazing the fine line of scar tissue marring otherwise unblemished skin, she understood why. “It’s been a long time since I let anyone close to me. My line of work, you let someone in, one of you dies.” She trailed off a moment, thumb retracing that single, enduring reminder of their last mission. “Too many secrets.”

“It does not bother me,  _cherie_ ,” the sniper replied, setting her hand atop the hacker’s as she had earlier.

“Bothers me.”

Widowmaker opened her mouth to respond, thought better of it, closed it, opened it again. “Our conversation earlier,” she started, squeezing the hand beneath her own. “Normalcy.”

Sombra knit her brows quizzically; Widowmaker was uncertain as to whether the impetus was her statement or the water.

“Something happened,” she continued, lifting that same hand to the uneven scar Sombra bore on her own behalf. “Some  _things_ happened. Despite undesirable results, we chose to persist and rebuild. It is different,  _ouais_ , but it is  _something_.”

Sombra shook her head in half-hearted dismissal. “This is an Akande conversation. Metaphors and shit.”

Half-smiling, the sniper gave her a gentle shove. “Listen: I  _like_  this - our something. It is mutable, but it is part of my normal.  _You_  are part of my normal.”

“You got a fucked up normal,” Sombra huffed, but seemed on second thought to think better of it. “Me, too, though.”

Sombra’s agreement settled into the air between them, the bathroom quiet but for the continual hiss of water. There were other words and expressions to explore, nebulous, intriguing, but ultimately unnecessary. Widowmaker knew them already in the smile creeping across the hacker’s face, and she knew Sombra recognized them in the shadow of a grin she offered in return; together, they understood in silence what no words could express - a comfort found only in death and its aftermath - in blood, adrenaline, and sweat at what may as well be the end of the world - be it someone else’s or their own.

“Food?” Sombra asked after a moment. “Sex?”

Widowmaker snickered. “Go on and order something. I have to contend with… all this,” she said, waving vaguely at her own, endless hair. “Ten minutes.”

“Ten?”

“Twenty.”

“On it,” Sombra grinned, planting a kiss along the curve of the sniper’s jaw. “Thanks for saving me.”


End file.
